Tears
by Phoenix.G.Fawkes
Summary: Her sister is dead and the world is crumbling around her, but she will not shed a single tear, even if it kills her. SPOILERS SEASON FOUR


**Disclaimer:** Not mine, that's for sure.

**Summary:** Her sister is dead and the world is crumbling around her, but she will not shed a single tear, even if it kills her.

This is my first The O.C fic, and the 40th fic that I publish at so you can review and celebrate with me.

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**Tears**

When she was little, tears had flowed to her eyes with ease. A scrapped knee, mocking from her classmates, a bad fall from her pony: anything was sufficient to reduce her to tears. Her Dad would pat her head distractedly, her sister would roll her eyes and ignore her whereas her Mom would frown at her, saying something along the lines 'Sweetie, crying like that'll only ruin your pretty eyes', without making a difference. She had, as her mean cousins from Riverside liked to say, been born a cry baby. She had a long time ago accepted such fate and felt okay with it. As a child she had little or no power to control what happened around her and tears were a way to deal with everyday's injustices as good as any other.

That was before everything went to hell, of course.

Her entire world crumbled around her before she had time to shed a single tear. Her Dad was no longer the hero she'd once believed him to be and even though she paid no attention to the nasty rumours flying throughout her school, she could never look at him in the same way again. Her Mom grew distant and detached, too self-absorbed in her own worries to frown at her youngest child's tears over her lost pony. And then, of course, there was Marissa.

Marissa cried easily too. One could almost say she had a knack for it. However, nobody had ever called her a cry baby, perhaps because her life was always so full of tragedy and despair that no one could blame her if she shed a few tears. Although that could also be because Marissa had developed the rare talent of looking beautiful even with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

Marissa Copper was not a drama queen. She was a sorrowful martyr, a wayward child, a tragic heroine, a drowning beauty who everybody wanted to save.

But she was no cry baby. That title was Kaitlin's, and only Kaitlin's, to behold.

Except tears became useless when there was no one there with a tissue to dry them, dissolving into sobs lost its appeal when there was no one there to hold her tight. Crying was no longer a valid way to deal with everyday's tragedies and so, one day, tears stopped rolling down Kaitlin's cheeks.

Snarkiness and snide comments became her preferred weapon of choice: if you hit first with enough strength, they would not be able to hit you back. She went through life with an iron armour to protect her flesh from the attacks that came from all sides. It worked, even as life kept throwing rocks at her family, even as everything around her fell apart.

There were times when it was tough, though. When Marissa would cry from dawn to nightfall over the man she'd shot, when her mother seemed too busy to realise she was even there, when their father left them once more. When she came home to learn she no longer had one, when she realised that even though she had been away for months Marissa kept being the freaking queen of their hellish town, when her mother forgot her birthday.

All those times she'd felt her iron armour crack around the edges, she'd felt the sharp knife of hurt and disappointment twist in her gut. But she did not cry. Not a single tear rolled down her cheeks.

Johnny died and she spent a week lying awake in her bed, night after night, his desperate screams as he fell off the cliff ringing in her ears, his look of utter fear and ache forged in her retinas. Her eyes, though, remained dry.

Her eyes were dry too when they told her about the accident. Some people might not remember where they were or what they were doing the moment they received some devastating news, all the trivialness of everyday life erased forever by an earth-shaking tragedy, destroying all memories of a prior time. Kaitlin was not among those people. She remembered every little detail with painful accuracy. She remembered what she had been doing (painting her toenails in her – _Marissa's_ – bedroom), she remembered what music had been blasting on the stereo (one of Marissa's punk CD's), she remembered what she'd been thinking (how would she start her new life as Harbor's queen now that Marissa was gone at last, and wondering whether to get ice-cream to celebrate), she remembered hearing the phone ringing but not bothering to pick it up.

She remembered hearing Dr. Robert's hurried footsteps towards her bedroom, she remembered getting angry when he'd opened the door without knocking first, remembered thinking a nasty comment or two to throw at his way – and she remembered all too clearly his stricken face and his faltering voice when he'd told her about the accident. She had stood very still for a moment, a drop of black nail-polish falling on the mattress, and she remembered thinking that stain would be hard to get out.

When she'd asked if Marissa was okay and he hesitated, she'd known it.

She would've liked to say she'd refused to believe it at first, that her mind was too overwhelmed with shock to process what was going on. But it wasn't. She knew from the start that her sister would not come back. The truth hit her with the strength of a speeding train, but she did not let it show. The iron mask remained in place even as the entire world around her burnt to the ground, leaving her alone amidst a desert of ashes and lost hopes.

She would have liked to say that the days after Marissa's death had passed in a blur. She would have liked to say she was so overcome with grief that she did not see that all her father needed from her when he came for the funeral was a hug and the reassurance that he would not lose another daughter, instead of being pushed away by her. She would have liked to say she did not see that Marissa's shoes clashed with the horrid, laced Barbie-pink dress she was wearing in the coffin, she would have liked to say she did not notice when her mother switched her light sleeping pills by things that would knock her out for most of the day. She would have liked to say so many things, but she was tired of lies. She wanted nothing more than to get rid of them for good… but they seemed to surround her.

Her father lied, saying she could count on him for anything right before shipping off. Dr. Roberts lied, saying her mother would eventually overcome this – when they both knew she was slipping away, with a big, fake smile on her face that could not conceal her dead eyes. The Cohens lied, with promises of support and help they'd never be able to fulfill – there was nothing that could be done, not now, not ever. Kaitlin guessed that Ryan must have lied as well when he'd said he loved Marissa because he never showed up at her funeral.

The funeral itself was a wonderfully orchestrated web of lies. Marissa's radiant and stiff smile on her dead face. The Reverend's heartfelt words about the brilliant future she would have had – when everybody knew it was only a matter of time before she faltered once more. The sentiment in Dr. Kim's speech on what a loss it was to Harbor, when the board had gone to all extents to keep her away from the school grounds. The circumspect and sad expressions on the faces of Orange County's elite – when they couldn't have cared less. Even the words 'rest in peace' rang fake in her ears: Marissa had not known a moment of peace in the last years of her life, there was no reason to believe she would find it in death.

The falsehood surrounding Marissa's farewell ceremony was not, however, what perturbed Kaitlin the most. She could bear the sight of fake looks of sorrow forced upon uncaring people's faces – what she could not bear, though, were the true signs of grief on those that did care.

Everybody around her was mourning. Her mother's cheeks were stained with tears, the last she would shed before the drugs took away her ability to feel. Her Dad's hands trembled when he placed a bouquet of white orchids on his eldest daughter's coffin. Summer's voice broke when she said Marissa was the closest thing to a sister she'd ever had. Even Seth's eyes were suspiciously wet when with a low, barely steady voice he read out loud a passage of what apparently was Marissa's favourite novel.

All around her there were signs of grief – true, unadultarated grief, which translated in a thousand tears rolling down the faces of the few who'd truly loved Marissa Cooper. A thousand tears, and none of those were shed by her own sister.

The cynical would have said she just did not care enough. The sentimental would have sworn she was bravely refraining herself. The truth was that she was trying with all her might to cry, but no tears would come to her painfully dry eyes.

She tried to think of Marissa as she'd been the last time she'd seen her, the bright light in her eyes, light that spoke of hope and new beginnings, of a life that was robbed from her. She tried to think of Marissa when she had helped her out at boarding school, of Marissa remembering her birthday when not even her Mom had, of Marissa holding her tight before leaving her life forever. She tried to remember a time when she'd worshipped her older sister, who was the prettiest girl in town and never said a mean word to her when she took her Barbies without permission. She tried to remember Marissa's laugh and tears, and to think that she would never hear her laugh, would never see her cry again, because she was cold and stiff in a coffin. She repeated to herself, over and over again, that she would never see her sister again – but no tears came to her eyes and in the end, Kaitlin just stopped trying.

Life went on. Summer arrived and left, and with fall came school. With school came the looks of mixed pity and morbid curiosity, the exasperation of her teachers at her lack of dedication, the hot guys she would flirt with, the bimbo girls that would look down on her, Brian and Eric who would follow her anywhere. And of course, the whispering. Everywhere she turned, soft voices followed her, empty words echoing in her ears. _'Is she heartless?' 'Hasn't she got any blood left in her veins?' 'She seems so cold.' 'I don't think she's human. I mean, come on, her sister died and she has not cried once!'_

The last statement was true. She did not cry once since her sister's death. She moved on with her life, as though she believed her sister would be back in any moment and everything would be normal again (but she knew her sister's beautiful face was decaying in her coffin and that nothing would ever go back the way it was). She moved on as though she could not see how her Mom was becoming a shell of the woman she'd once been (but she did), as she had no reason to believe Dr. Roberts would abandon them just like everybody else had (but she'd seen him with Stepmonster). She kept going as though her Dad had not stopped a long time acting like her father (but he had run away to the other end of the world once more), as though she was not aware that nobody seemed to care enough to ask how she was doing (but she was).

She acted as though there was not an abyssmal hole in her life where once her sister had been, as though she did not miss Marissa, as though her childhood had not been robbed from her, as though she was not an abandoned child with no one to rely on. She kept the act for so long that she began to believe it herself.

Until tonight.

Thanksgiving had never meant much for the Coopers. Her Dad was usually more concerned about football than the turkey, her Mom just couldn't be interested in a holiday that did not involve a fancy party and there were no presents to provoke the girls' enthuasiasm. It was a holiday that never held too much importance at her home so she didn't really miss it when they stopped celebrating it all together.

Perhaps that was why her Mom's misguided attempts to keep tradition had unsettled her so much. To Kaitlin it was more proof that her mother was no longer the woman she'd known. When she saw her Mom struggling with a frozen turkey like a madwoman, when there'd been a time she wouldn't have been caught dead in the kitchen, she decided she'd had enough. If there had been someone else, she might have been able to bear her Mom's weirdness, but Summer was gone on a mission of some sort and Dr. Roberts was MIA, so she left for the Cohens', who would welcome anyone with open arms.

Kaitlin was surprised to find she was actually having a good time there, away from all the drama. She had been laughing inwardly at Taylor's strange comments, talking to Darryl and the other homeless people around and enjoying the Cohens company until her mother had walked into the room. One look at her face and Kaitlin realised that this woman standing before her was really her mother, not the shell of a person she'd been since Marissa's funeral. Her face was stricken, as though she had just woken up from a nightmare, but in her eyes she saw a light, an awareness that had been missing in the last five months. Kaitlin, the girl known as Harbor's Ice Queen, the girl who never showed her feelings, nearly jumped from her seat and run to hold her mother.

But she did not even look at her. Instead she went straight to _Ryan_, of all people. Kaitlin watched them from afar, both of them sitting next to each other, talking quietly, laughing softly – when she could not remember the last time she'd seen her mother laugh. Something broke inside her then. She kept her act together as always, but the smile on her face was more forced than ever, her cool façade was harder to maintain.

Much, much later that night, when she was hidden under the covers of a bed that had once belonged to her dead sister, Kaitlin started to cry. Her body was shaken by desperate sobs, her throat burnt and the tears kept falling down her cheeks. She cried for everything. Every hurt feeling, every unshed tear of the last few years was burning inside her chest now as she let it all go.

She cried because her parents had divorced and the life as she'd known it had ended. She cried because the image she had of her Daddy was destroyed forever, she cried because her mother had shipped her off to boarding school without a second thought, she cried because tragedy seemed to follow her family around. She cried for her sister – both for her death and the jealously she'd felt over her. But above all she cried because her mother, the only person she had left, had abandoned her once more.

Kaitlin had thought that once her Mom overcame her grief – and she would because Julie Cooper was a survivor – they would be a family. A strange, small family, but they would have each other for support. It was a short-lived dream. Her mother had woken up from the daze Marissa's death had left her in, she had stopped being a zombie – and yet, she chose to rely on Ryan, somebody she'd always loathed, instead of turning to her youngest daughter. Once more Kaitlin was pushed aside.

Kaitlin was again the girl left alone in the school's playground when her parents forgot to pick her up. She was again the girl that nobody bothered to ask how she had done at school or to sign her reports. She was again the girl that faded into the background as everything revolved around Marissa.

Kaitlin cried harder, feeling like her chest was going to explode, but nobody came to comfort her. She didn't expect it either. Even with Marissa gone, she would always be ignored, pushed aside, a minor role in a bigger play whereas her sister would always be the main star.

The irony was that, as she buried her face in the pillow, her tears wetting the cloth around her, Kaitlin realised she would have done anything to have her sister back.

But she couldn't bring her back and tears kept flowing until the sun rose in the horizon. When she went to the kitchen for breakfast, there was a smile on her face and a cheerful note in her voice. If her smile was forced or her voice cracked, if her eyes were red her cheeks wet with tears, nobody noticed.

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End file.
